Chapter Text
Hux dipped the end of his comb into pomade and tapped it sharply against the rim to clear the excess from between the tines, then found his parting with a fingertip, sweeping the comb sideways from the mark. He raised his eyes to the plate of mirrored transparisteel he had propped in place and touched his finger to the pot of cosmetic creme, applying it to the reddened corners of his eyes and mouth – the ravages of a life lived in artificially circulated air. Next, he took his daily dose of vitamin D, an artificial replacement for the sunlight he would never see. Then he dressed himself in full uniform – a set that bore fold marks from months in vacuum-packed storage, but would have to do, for now. For the first time since the loss of the Starkiller Base he felt something like his old self. He swung his greatcoat into place across his shoulders and tightened the buttons of his gloves, then took a deep fortifying breath and went to keep his appointment with the Supreme Leader.
A shuttle took him from the Finalizer down to the planet’s surface. A great stone edifice rose in steps above the treeline of the misty, jungle terrain. Hux was conducted to a lofty stone chamber within where he found the Supreme Leader sitting in state atop a dais. Snoke was smaller in real life than in his holographic projection, less like some kind of terrible elder god and more like something wretched and pitiable. His grey-white flesh looked like it had been torn from his skull and sewn back in place by a taxidermist of no very great skill or scrupulosity.
“General.” His voice had a sharp, ringing quality and echoed off the stone walls.
“Supreme Leader,” Hux clicked his booted heels together smartly and saluted, then stood to attention. “I thank you for the honour of this audience.”
Snoke leaned back, spidery fingers tapping on the arms of his throne. “Kylo Ren has already briefed me on the regrettable chain of events that led to the destruction of the Starkiller. Strange, is it not, how much disorder can result from a tiny cog gone awry – one stormtrooper has an attack of conscience and the end result…” Snoke lifted his hands and turned them upwards.
“Respectfully, Supreme Leader, I think that Ren may have somewhat understated his own role in the disaster.”
“You must bear in mind that Ren is with the First Order, but not of the First Order. He answers to me alone. He has his own instructions and his own agenda.”
“He certainly has his own agenda. Had he not been chasing his personal demons we might have succeeded in finally destroying the rebel stronghold.”
“Ren did what was necessary under the circumstances.”
“I fail to see how killing that pathetic, beaten-down confidence trickster he once called ‘father’ could be necessary to our mission.” Hux feared he had overstepped his bounds with this criticism, but Snoke merely looked amused. He leaned forward, black eyes shining in the dim light that filtered down from narrow slits in the ceiling. “Each man that would be truly great must kill his father, General Hux. In this respect, Kylo Ren is only more literal than most.”
“I see.” Hux held Snoke’s searching gaze and tried not to blink or look away.
“You are troubled, General. You cannot accept your great loss and you begin to doubt our final victory, as well as your own role in it.”
“Supreme Leader I—”
“Do not bother to deny it. This, too, is a necessary process. Know that Kylo Ren will be with me for some time to complete the final stage of his training. In the meantime, if you have demons of your own to contend with, I suggest you take the time to do so. Now go; return when you have regained your resolve.”
“As you command.” Hux ducked his head in obeisance and went from the room.
As he passed through an antechamber, Hux came upon Kylo Ren, who was lurking, perhaps awaiting a summons of his own. Ren had yet to receive a replacement helmet and so the raw, red line that bisected his face diagonally, cresting over the bridge of his nose, stood out starkly. Whatever else remained of his injuries was hidden by his layers of black clothing. He glared at Hux with his usual mix of distrust and resentment.
Ungrateful whelp, Hux thought pointedly, aware that Ren was prone to casually thumbing through the contents of his mind. Looking for tidbits, no doubt, to drop at the feet his master. Don’t forget who dragged your bleeding, broken body out of the snow.
“Did you have a good talk with our Supreme Leader?” Ren quipped.
“Enlightening.”
Ren crossed his arms over his chest, using this movement to draw attention from a shift of his hips that betrayed lingering discomfort from the injury to his side. “Now, whatever will you do with all this free time while I am busy training?”
“That is no concern of yours, Ren.”
“Perhaps you’ll act like a true red-blooded soldier for once and spend all your back pay in some remote cantina. Imagine that – General Hux, letting loose.”
“Perhaps I will,” Hux retorted. “It would be fitting – that I learn the novelty of reckless self-indulgence as you learn that of discipline.”
Ren’s eyes widened with outrage at this, but Hux paid him no heed. He turned and briskly made his way from the room.
*~*~*
Hux could have chartered a ship to his next destination, but he preferred to maintain anonymity. He took a shuttle to the nearest populous planet and a passenger ship from there, from there he bartered passage on a freighter. There was little call for tourism to the Outer Rim.
As he leaned his shoulder against a rusted bulkhead, Hux closed his eyes and tried to rest. He shifted in his civilian clothes, which fit him loosely, like a skin he had already shed. One of his earliest memories was of a journey like this: the belly of a ship not designed to carry human passengers; his mother’s hand in his hair as she pressed his face to her chest, fingernails sharp against his scalp. Later (much later) he would learn that the second Death Star had just been destroyed. The Empire was fracturing, its soldiers and statesmen turning on one another in fear, panic and opportunistic ambition.
He thought of the snowy ground shaking beneath his feet as the Starkiller base began to be consumed by its own solar fuel. The Sith of old had a motto: ‘what nourishes me also destroys me’; in the original Balc tongue the phrase was somewhat palindromic.
He thought of the black figure collapsed in defeat, of bending and hefting the weight of the prone man to lie just-so over his shoulder, and lifting with his knees, staggering for a moment under the dead weight. There was so much blood in the snow Hux had momentarily considered giving up and simply waiting for the inevitable explosion – because Snoke had told him to bring Ren back alive, and the Supreme Leader did not tolerate failure (at least, not in non-Force users).
On the escape shuttle, he had unbuckled Ren’s belt and pressed both hands to the leaking blaster wound to apply pressure (the other injuries were from sabers, and thus self-cauterising). Ren’s breath rattled from between his blue-white lips as he grabbed at Hux and smeared blood all down the side of the general’s face. Hux does not like blood – he is not a butcher, or a sadist. Violence, when necessary, should be impersonal.
*~*~*
Jerne was a god-forsaken, arid planet; home to an extinct species and subsequently subjected to a land-grab by unscrupulous industrialists. When the natural resources were depleted, the planet had once again fallen off the radar of civilization. It was now only used as a staging post by those seeking a less conspicuous travel route than the Hydian Way – smugglers, in other words, and outlaws.
From the sleazy port, Hux made his way on foot for a few miles. He passed scrap metal dealerships, drinking and gambling establishments, and brothels; further out were the shanty towns that ran on purloined power run through miles of frayed, humming cable. Then there was simply nothing – wave after wave of sand dunes, the vista enlivened with only the odd outcropping of rock or remnant of a disused mining structure (whatever could not be scavenged and carted away). He oriented himself and made his way over a ridge and into a sort of valley beyond. There nestled a white building made up of an interconnected series of domes. A plume of grey smoke drifted from an aperture in the roof.
Hux half-walked, half slid down into the sandy basin. Nothing but a thick canvas curtain covered the main entrance way, and he pushed it aside before ducking into the first chamber. As he did so, Hux caught sight of the dwelling’s occupant in an unguarded moment. He took in the face in profile – lined but still shrewd, faint traces of auburn accenting his beard at the jaw and temples. The man sat up at a table, his ramrod-straight spine betraying his military heritage. He was scrolling through information on an old, battered datapad.
“Hello, Commandant.”
“Brendol,” came the other man’s gruff reply. Hux stiffened at the use of his given name – a name he never used, and had never felt belonged to him. “You look well.”
“I see you’re keeping busy. What are you researching?”
“I’m writing an account. It’s about the rise of the Empire.”
“I thought there would be plenty of records of that already.”
“Well, they never get it all right, or there are significant omissions.”
Hux nodded. He remembered the end of year presentations at the academy when he was a teenager; how the instructors would bring him up on the stage before the assembly and get him to extemporise speeches in response to a flawed precept (‘liberty is a right that supersedes law’), or to answer obscure questions concerning military history. Hux always excelled in these exhibitions, and the assembled parents and cadets would dutifully applaud. Afterwards, his father would take him aside, heavy hand on his narrow adolescent shoulder, and task him on a trivial distinction or neglected detail.
“What are you doing back here?” the older man asked.
“I have some leave.” Hux dropped his kit bag and rolled his stiff shoulder.
“What kind of outfit grants leave in the middle of an ongoing campaign?”
“Our Supreme Leader is a man of singular vision, though his methods may seem unconventional.”
“So I hear.” His father grunted, pushed himself out of his chair. “You plan on quartering here long?”
“Not long. I wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m not an invalid.”
“I realise that.”
His father went to the small, primitive hotplate and stirred the steaming contents of a battered caf can. “You want a cup of this?”
Hux nodded. “Yes, thank-you.”
“Sit down then.”
Hux took up a place upon a footstool – the only other seat in the small, spare room. When his father passed him the mug he cupped his hands around it gratefully, shivering – he was not used to the vagaries of temperature that one encountered outside a pressurized cabin. “Did you get my message?”
“What message?”
“I sent you an invitation to the promotion ceremony.”
“Oh,” the older man said flatly, “that.”
“I thought you might at least send a reply.”
“I considered that no reply was clear enough,” his father stared down at his drink. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“I thought you would be proud. You raised me for this.”
“I raised you to serve the Empire. There’s no Empire anymore – this, this ‘New Order’—”
“First Order.”
“It’s nature abhorring a vacuum. A horde of nobodies playing dress-up.” His father shook his head and looked away. “You’re too young to remember what it was really like – the Empire’s forces were a well-oiled machine. Officers were rigorously trained, the weak weeded from the ranks.”
“Yes, you certainly saw to that.”
His father waved a hand in agitation. “I mean it as no criticism of you, son – you always showed ability. But in those days, I would never have to call some fresh-faced youth ‘General’.”
“Is that what you think – that I attained my rank out of desperation, or pity?” Hux stared at him for a long, dangerous moment. “You have no idea what I have sacrificed. The schemes I built, who I had to climb over, or what it all cost me.”
The older man narrowed his eyes. “Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?”
“No. I merely thought that you, of all people, might understand. Then again, you never really did get very far up the ranks. You preferred to surround yourself with the young and impressionable, those who might lap up your schemes and carry them forward without any effort – or risk – on your part.”
“Brendol. I suggest you stop now before you say something you regret.”
“I don’t mean it as a criticism, necessarily. You were effective, in your own way. Did you know that we now train the stormtroopers just as you always suggested – taking them as children, as the Jedi did, raising them up to do our bidding without question?” Hux sniffed, sipped his drink. “It’s not one hundred percent effective, I regret to say.”
“No doubt you neglected to cull the weak recruits. Or encourage the herd to thin itself, which is better.”
“The First Order does not like to waste resources.”
“Better to lose one sickly nerf than risk the infection of the whole flock.”
“Well,” Hux said, tossing the bitter dregs into the fire and rising to his feet. “Doubtless, if you were in charge, the whole thing would run without a hitch – the Republic and the Resistance wouldn’t get a look-in. But you had your chance, and now here you are, in exile, dreaming of the glorious Empire that once was.”
His father looked up. “Leaving already? What did you even come here for – my blessing?”
“Would you give it to me if I asked?”
“No. I recognise folly and arrogance when I see it.”
“Do you really, father?” Hux shouldered his bag and took a lingering look at the figure in the chair. Then he turned and pushed his way past the ragged curtain and back into the desert night.
When he had passed over the brow of the dune he slid to his knees, casting his bag from him and pulling at the fabric draped around his neck as he gasped for air. He looked at the twin moons hanging low and ominous in the sky and laughed. He reflected that all his life he had been pounding on the locked door of his father’s regard and now he knew that it was not a door at all, but a blank, impenetrable wall. Enough, he said to himself and breathed.
In the distance, coloured lights twinkled, guiding him back to the nearest thing this planet had to civilization.
*~*~*
The barman had sold Hux a bottle of what he claimed was Corellian Brandy, yet the peeling label lacked the point-of-origin hologram that would confirm it as the genuine product, rather than a bootlegged knock-off that was no doubt full of adulterants. Hux found that he didn’t care. In fact, as the night progressed, he was increasingly surprising himself with the things he no longer had the capacity to give a damn about. The group of Twi’lek in the cantina’s far corner were clearly haggling over a consignment of illegal arms. The sabacc players to his far left were gambling (and cheating, and wearing weapons they undoubtedly did not have permits for). A drunken bounty hunter sitting at the table across from Hux was being deftly pick-pocketed by his female companion (whose outfit seemed cunningly designed to assist her with a career in misdirection). What did it matter? Sooner or later, the First Order would sweep these miscreants – and all who harboured them – away.
The liquor burned his throat and sinuses as he took a large gulp from his glass, the warm, fuzzy ambience gradually increasing.
A young man stopped by Hux’s table and glanced down at the three-quarters full bottle. He had dark, shoulder length hair that fell in tangled waves and eyes that had a strange, inhuman opalescence. He wore a belted tunic of some lightweight, woven material and both of his bare forearms were laden with half a dozen coloured wooden bracelets that clacked together as he gestured and moved. “Are we celebrating a good day, or getting over a really bad one?”
“Celebrating.”
“Oh yeah?” the young man’s smile was just a little forced. “What’s the occasion?”
Hux poured himself another glassful. “I just killed my father.” As young man’s eyes widened and drifted to his kit bag, Hux waved a hand and added: “Figuratively.”
“Figuratively,” the young man repeated, as if by doing so he could absorb the word’s meaning. “Can I join you?”
“By all means.” When the young man slid into the booth next to him, Hux turned over the second dirty glass that had come with his ‘brandy’ and poured him a large measure. “Coruscanti?” he asked.
The young man swallowed down half his drink in one gulp and shook his head. “Alderaanian.”
Hux raised a sceptical eyebrow. “There hasn’t been an Alderaan in your lifetime.”
“No, but my parents were off-planet when… when it was destroyed. I grew up in a refugee enclave on Raxxa. What about you?”
“Here and there. I was a military brat, spent most of my childhood in academies.”
“That sounds rough. Is that why you hated your father?”
“No, that’s because he refuses to believe it’s my destiny to become the new galactic emperor.”
The Alderaanian grinned, taking the statement as a joke. “That’s terrible. I thought parents were supposed to support your dreams no matter what.”
“Exactly.” Hux poured him another drink.
“I like your hair,” the Alderaanian said, tilting his head. “And your see-through eyelashes. Are you genetically enhanced?”
Hux laughed. “No, though I suppose it’s a rare phenotype in this end of the galaxy.” He lifted a forefinger and indicated the other man’s strange eyes. “Is that what this is, an enhancement?”
“Yeah, got it done a while back in Truuzdann. So I can see in the dark.”
“And what do you see in the dark?”
The Alderaanian sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and smiled at him. “All kinds of things.” Hux heard the clackity-clack of the bracelets and a warm hand came to rest just above his knee. He glanced sharply down and then back up at the other man’s liquid-mercury eyes.
Hux did not consider himself sheltered: in his younger years, he had occasionally taken advantage of off-planet leave to relieve his sexual tensions, generally in the hands of professionals. There had even been two affairs, of sorts. The first was when he was sixteen or seventeen years old – naturally enough, with a fellow cadet. It was hormone-fuelled and largely unsentimental: furtive open-mouthed kisses and handjobs in moments stolen between classes and drills. One afternoon they were happened upon by an instructor and dragged before the commandant. Hux sat on a hard plastic chair and listened to the abject sobs and pleadings of his co-conspirator: he had been confused, the youth claimed, led astray. Please don’t tell my father.
Hux had been annoyed: he distinctly remembered telling the other boy to check that the storage room door was locked. In the end, no formal record was made of their Conduct Unbecoming, and Hux had always suspected this was in deference to his own father. The other boy later died in a freak accident when one of the blasters used in a wargames simulation was found to have been unaccountably switched from ‘training’ to ‘combat’ mode.
The second was when Hux was a little while out of the academy and newly appointed to the rank of lieutenant, stationed on a reclaimed Imperial Army base on Felucia. A male corporal assigned to the same barracks struck up something of a rapport with Hux. The corporal was from Naboo; Hux considered him uncharacteristically bright for a non-commissioned officer and they often played holochess together when off duty. Hux enjoyed his company and had he been prone to sentiment he might have termed their association a friendship. Then one evening the corporal surprised him by cornering Hux in the corridor outside his quarters and declaring a violent love for him. Hux could still feel the pressure of hot, clammy hands clinging to his own, thumbs stroking his knuckles. The other man’s eyes were wide and earnest, his bottom lip trembled. I know it’s crazy, but I can’t stop thinking about you. You are the best thing in my life, do you know that?
Hux politely declined his attentions and later reported him for fraternization.
The Alderaanian was still gazing at him through slightly lowered lashes.
“Well,” Hux said, sounding flat to his own ears. “That’s quite a proposition.”
The Alderaanian read this as encouragement. “I know where to get a decent room. We can take the bottle.”
*~*~*
Hux woke in darkness to the sound of a thud and a hissed curse. He rolled over and patted for the light. The panel next to the bed flickered slowly to life, casting everything in a frigid blue glow.
The Alderaanian was fully dressed, crouched on the floor by Hux’s bag; some of its contents were strewn about next to him. The first thought Hux had was that the man was a spy for the Resistance, but his frozen, panicked look plainly told this was not so – that he was just an ordinary kind of scoundrel.
“If you wanted payment you should have arranged it in advance,” Hux told him, sitting up and carding his fingers through his hair.
“I’m not a whore,” the Alderaanian hissed.
“I don’t see what cause you have to take offence – it’s perfectly legal in this sector, unlike thievery.”
As the young man sat back on his haunches, Hux took note of what he held in his hands: his uniform hat, with its prominent risen sun insignia.
“You’re with the First Order, those new-wave imperialist thugs.”
“Everyone will soon be with the First Order, or they will be dead. I suggest you choose wisely, Alderaanian.” His rose from the bed and sought out the clothes he had left draped over a chair. “Put everything back where you found it and perhaps I won’t drag you to the nearest security force outpost.”
“You kriffing wish!” The Alderaanian sprang up and rushed at him. Hux swept the other man’s foot out from under him and slammed him face-first onto the filthy floor, bending his arm up behind his back. Then Hux put his knee to the small of the Alderaanian’s back and leaned all his weight on it.
“Careful now. I’m an imperialist thug, remember?”
The Alderaanian let out a yell of pain and fury, bucking against Hux and getting nowhere. With his dark hair spread across a face contorted in impotent rage, he rather reminded Hux of Kylo Ren. “Get off me you sadistic pig.”
“Ah-ah-ah. I have been nothing but accommodating all evening. It is you whose manners need a significant adjustment.”
“Please!”
When Hux finally released him, the Alderaanian twisted away and scrambled across the floor. He then sat with his back against the far wall, rubbing his elbow and glaring. “I don’t have a choice!” he spat petulantly. “I need to get passage out of this hell-hole.”
“That’s really none of my concern, is it?” Hux continued to dress, shrugging on his civilian jacket and slinging his holster belt into place around his hips. His head was pounding but he was not about to turn his back to dig the med-kit containing analgesics from the bottom of his bag.
“It should be,” the Alderaanian bared his teeth. “I could tell some stories about you, you know. To people who’d be interested.”
Anger flared behind Hux’s eyes. He thought about what Ren would do when faced with such an insolent threat – use the Force to drag the man off the ground by his throat and suspend him there until his fragile hyoid bone buckled inwards and choked him, no doubt.
“You don’t even know my name, or my rank, and I highly doubt that the Resistance cares about an enemy officer’s tawdry little fling at the arse-end of the galaxy.”
“Brendol Hux,” the Alderaanian retorted defiantly. “I read it on a datapad. I told you I can see in the dark. There’s a crazy old man who lives outside town with that name – I bet that’s your father, right?”
Hux sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the blaster from its holster and placing it on his knee. He stared at it contemplatively for a moment. “I was presented with this at my last medal pinning. It’s intended to be ceremonial, and I have never fired it. Do you know why that is?”
The Alderaanian curled his lip in false bravado. “Because you’re a coward who’s afraid to get his hands dirty?”
Hux raised his eyes. “Because this is a weapon for killing rebel scum at close-quarters, and I have people to do that for me.” He unlatched the safety with his thumb. “Usually, that is.”